A Brief Discussion on Incentives and Barriers to Computational Thinking Education

Abstract

The idea that computational thinking or algorithmic thinking should be taught to everyone dates back to the 1960s. First in 1960s, Alan Perlis argued that computer programming should be taught to everyone because it can be used as a mental tool for understanding and solving every kind of problem. In 1980s, under the leadership of Seymour Papert, students at the level of primary education were attempted to be taught LOGO programming language with the aim of gaining procedural thinking skill. After the publication of Jeannette Wing's “computational thinking” in Communications of the ACM in 2006, the idea that the basic concepts of computer science should be learned by all was started to be debated widely again. In the present paper, the justifications for teaching computational thinking and applicability of teaching computational thinking within the context of existing conditions will be discussed.